Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood and I am not making any profit from this work.

Obvious

"Ianto?"

Ianto didn't have time to look up from his newspaper before Jack had flopped down onto the sofa beside him. It was just gone seven in the evening and they were taking a little quiet time. Owen was tinkering away in the autopsy bay, and Gwen and Tosh had nipped out to get everybody fish and chips. It was looking to be one of those long, boring nights of eyeing the Rift monitors warily in case they spiked again. Which they had three times in the past three hours. Only not very regularly.

"What?" Ianto mumbled, busy scanning the business pages.

"Am I obvious?"

"About what?"

"About you."

"About me?" Ianto asked uncomprehendingly. Or he was just trying to avoid the issue. Or was finding it amusing. Jack could never quite tell with Ianto - but then, nobody else could either, so that was okay.

"Yeah," Jack said, twisting sideways to dump his head in Ianto's lap and peer up at his face, successfully distracting him from the newspaper. "Owen said I was 'bloody obvious' when it came to you, if nothing else."

Ianto considered that, then shrugged and said, "Seems a fair assessment to me."

He tried to go back to the paper, but Jack tugged it away insistently and dumped it on the floor, demanding Ianto's full attention. Not that that was particularly unusual, in Ianto's view, and he settled instead for carding his fingers through Jack's hair absently. Jack frowned up at him for another couple of minutes before saying:

"How am I obvious?"

"Let me think," Ianto said thoughtfully. "You have your head in my lap, for starters. You give me bedroom eyes across the Hub, and use the comms devices to tell me all your sordid fantasies when you know full well the others are listening. Oh, and you like to clean out my tonsils for me every morning in front of the rest of the team."

"Every morning? Really?"

"Yes. At quarter past nine. Even if we're out."

"I'm good."

Ianto rolled his eyes.

"Is it a bad sort of obvious?" Jack asked.

"I've never found reason to complain," Ianto said, trying to reach his newspaper, but Jack tensed and forcibly kept him sitting where he was.

"You barely ever complain anyway."

"Not in company, no," Ianto said.

"So how do I know it's not a bad sort of obvious?"

"I haven't punched you in the face yet," Ianto explained patiently. "That's what I did to the last guy to be too obvious."

"Was it a kinky punishment, or..."

"No, it was not a kinky punishment," Ianto said wearily. "God, Jack, get your libido on a lead."

Jack grinned up at him again, before his raw, intense gaze softened and he captured Ianto's hand in his, squeezing the fingers lightly. Something in his mood shifted ever so slightly, the humour giving way to something more serious, more warm, more heartfelt.

"Love you," he said. "You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I figured that out somewhere along the line," Ianto smiled.

"I can't help being obvious," Jack said. "You're there all the time and I can't stop thinking that I'm really, really lucky, and then I have to show you how lucky I am."

"Or, right now, how sappy you are?" Ianto teased, and Jack grinned.

"Can't help that either."

"I don't believe that," Ianto scoffed. "I think you just like to be awkward, don't you? And that's why you feel the random urge to grab me in the middle of lunch and share your food. Intimately."

"Well, you won't eat enough otherwise," Jack defended himself nobly. "I'm just watching out for you, making sure you eat a balanced diet and everything. You'll feel better and live longer that way."

"No, but the snogging part means you're getting enough exercise," Jack argued, reaching up to toy with the end of Ianto's tie. "As well as the sex. You're supposed to take frequent exercise; it's good for your heart and lungs."

"Smoker," Ianto said, and laughed at the indignant look on Jack's face. "Not any more. Lisa made me give them up."

"Good on her," Jack muttered crossly. "How long since you stopped? I've never smelled smoke on you. Or tasted it, or..."

Ianto screwed up his face and thought about it, before saying, "Four years. Except for one sneaky cigarette after a really bad day at work last year. Which made me realise I've been out of practice too long. It wasn't as good as I remember."

"Well don't."

Ianto stared at Jack for a little while, before asking suspiciously: "Are you thinking of raiding my flat for fags?"

"Yes."

"Jack!"

Jack instantly went into 'stubborn mode'. That was what Ianto called. Owen called it 'bastard mode', Tosh didn't call it anything, and Gwen's name for it involved several rude Welsh phrases and an elaborate eye-roll that always made Ianto snort whatever he happened to be drinking at the time up his nose. Because Gwen timed it like that. Bitch.

"You can't stop me."

"I bloody well can."

"You're not allowed cigarettes in your house."

"It's my house!"

"It's my boyfriend!" Jack argued.

"Oi!" Owen bellowed from his workstation. "Stop the sodding lovey-dovey talk! And tea-boy! I have an empty coffee mug here! Empty! Do you want me getting more myself?!"

Jack burst out laughing as he was unceremoniously dumped off Ianto's lap and the Welshman stormed off to the kitchen, swearing in a language that was, interestingly, neither Welsh nor English. He watched Owen and Ianto yell at each other clean across the Hub, watched Gwen glare between the two of them, and reflected that, really, despite all the shit the Rift threw at them, he loved his job and his team.

"Will the pair of you shut the fuck up?!" Gwen screeched.

Torchwood isn't all about defending the Earth.

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